Filled Halloween Cookies

Cut the room-temperature butter into cubes. It is ready when your finger can press a dent into it without resistance: only soft butter takes in air when beaten, and without air the dough becomes crumbly instead of tender.

Add the sugar, salt and vanilla and beat everything with the hand mixer for two to three minutes, until the mixture is noticeably lighter.

Pour the beaten egg in a thin stream while the mixer is running. If you add it all at once, the egg and butter will separate and the mixture will no longer be smooth.

Add the flour and mix only until no dry flour is visible. Every extra minute makes the dough tougher.

Press the mixture briefly into a dough and divide it into two halves. Work the cocoa into one half until the colour is even.

Flatten both doughs, wrap them in cling film and chill for about an hour. Cold dough can be pressed neatly into the mold without sticking to your fingers.

Place a piece of light and a piece of dark dough on top of each other, cut the piece and stack the halves again. Repeat this until you like the marbling. Don't knead: otherwise the colours will mix and the dough will simply turn brown.

Preheat the oven to 190 °C convection. Press a small piece of dough into a cavity of the silicone mold, first onto the base, then up the sides, so that a hollow remains in the middle. We filled the spider, skull, tombstone and pumpkin three times each, so twelve cavities per mold. The finer motifs are too small for a filling.

Scrape off the excess dough with the angled spatula. You don't need to grease the mold, the butter in the dough is enough.

Fill the berry filling into a dosing bottle and add a small dollop to each cavity. Better too little than too much: whatever doesn't fit will squeeze out at the sides during baking.

Flatten a small piece of dough in your palm, place it on the filling as a lid and press it firmly onto the edge so the filling is completely enclosed. Smooth the surface, as it will become the underside after removing it from the mold.

Place the mould on a Baking tray and bake the cookies for 12 minutes at 190 °C, fan oven. Let them cool completely in the mould: while still warm, the shortcrust pastry is soft and breaks. Then carefully press them out from below.

One mould makes twelve cookies. For the second batch, let the mould cool briefly and fill it again.